A court filing this week suggests Google has agreed to settle a patent dispute leveled by the Rockstar consortium, of which Apple is a major investor, suggesting the end is in sight for this particular lawsuit.

Search giant Google on Wednesday announced YouTube Music Key, a subscription service that will allow users to stream music from the popular video sharing site without ads, play music in the background, and access playlists offline.

The world's most popular mobile app has developed a new way to manage Android fragmentation, targeting users' hardware capabilities rather than devices' installed OS versions. Facebook's new efforts note that two thirds of the Android phones it sees "are equivalent to something released in 2011 or earlier."

As Apple introduced minor updates to iWork, Beats Music and more, a number of other key updates hit the iOS App Store, including a temporary sale on the popular Swype keyboard from Nuance, as well as Touch ID security and iOS 8 extension support added to Google Drive.

When Apple's chief executive Tim Cook came out as gay, jokes flew that Samsung might rush to announce it "was even more gay." In reality however, Samsung Electronics is a step further behind Apple, having yet to officially name a successor to its ailing leader Lee Kun-hee, who at 72 remains hospitalized following a heart attack in May.

In its ranking of electronic messaging systems for safety and security, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said no mainstream products passed all of its criteria, but that Apple's iMessage and FaceTime "stood out as the best of the mass-market options."

Google announced on Wednesday that its popular Maps platform, including the free downloadable iOS application, will receive a major update in the near future, including a new look and new features, such as the ability to make restaurant reservations through OpenTable without leaving the app.

Bump, an app developer Google acquired last year, is bouncing back under the codename Copresence, an effort to deliver AirPlay-like file sharing that appears to be deeply integrated with Google+ Hangouts, sparking new privacy concerns.

In a wide-ranging interview published Friday, Google CEO Larry Page briefly touched on late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs to highlight the differences between the two companies, one being hyper-focused on a small set of products and another with fingers in seemingly everything.

After failing to do much more than embarrass Samsung Electronics in years-long legal battles over patent infringement, Apple has rapidly obliterated Samsung's mobile division profitability, rendering it as barrenly unprofitable as every other Android or Windows licensee with razor thin margins in the phone, PC and tablet market.

Apple's new A8X Application Processor not only trounces other Android tablets in CPU tasks, but is also advancing iPad Air 2 to the front of the line in graphics operations as well, even before considering the ten-fold boost potential of iOS 8's Metal API.

At this week's Apple Event showing off the company's newest iPads and Macs, invited members of the media weren't directed around the back of Apple's Infinite Loop campus to the Town Hall door, as usual. They were greeted at the front door and led through the private campus courtyard.

Search giant Google on Wednesday unveiled three new Nexus-series devices -- a new 6-inch smartphone, 9-inch tablet, and set-top streaming media box - that will launch alongside the next version of the company's mobile operating system, Android 5 Lollipop.

James Comey, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, has once again slammed Apple's iPhone and devices running Android that can hold secure, encrypted data that is inaccessible by law enforcement, saying that such capabilities allow users to "place themselves beyond the law."

Google has added to its extensive collection of iOS apps with a new News & Weather offering, while third-party keyboard maker SwiftKey addressed performance issues in a new release and PDF Expert 5 added support for the iPhone 6 series and iOS 8.